


Flowers facing the sun

by StripySock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Warmth Sharing, Wincest Undertones, gencest, robo!sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 13:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is sick as hell, and Robo!Sam is the closest thing he has to comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flowers facing the sun

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hoodie-time.livejournal.com  
> Inspired by this [prompt](http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/66104.html?thread=20936504#t20936504)

He's never felt worse, his head aches full and heavy, and when he blinks his eyes are sore. He's almost never ill, almost never gets colds, but when he does they're bad, they make him want to sleep, and retch and swear off food. He’s generally learnt to ignore them, has never subscribed to any of the homeopathic shit Lisa’s friend Jules used to hawk (bar the occasional handful of Vitamin C disguised as chewy fruity tablets) has always reckoned that if you refuse to acknowledge it, it'll disappear in it's own sweet time. So this is shitty, and the worst timing possible. Slap bang in the middle of a day-long hunt they’d stumbled into, and even though the monster’s dead, it’s no relief. He can’t concentrate on the cleanup, on anything other than how his hands feel wrong, like they’re too big for his body, and how the contents of his stomach are making a ferocious bid for freedom.

 

In fact he's trembling under his jacket, cold striking through him, freezing the sweat still on his skin as he walks towards the car. It doesn't make it better that Sam is there, his hand on his shoulder, unnaturally warm. Is the rest of him bathing in hellfire Dean wonders, is there some sympathetic magic between soul and body? That’s his last thought before he passes out. When he wakes up, no more than a minute later struggling towards the surface of consciousness, he's in the car, and Sam is driving. There's no music. Sam doesn't listen to music not now, doesn’t even tap his fingers to it. When he sees Dean looking at him, he stares back, bottom lip caught between his teeth, like he's trying to understand something, with what could be vague puzzlement on his face. Sam never sleeps, doesn’t really need to eat, has probably never been sick. He must remember though what it felt like, struggles to bring back the details, memories filling in the gap of feeling. Before they get back to the motel, Sam stops at an all-night Walmart, comes back almost jauntily, the role of hunter fits him better now, even if all he's hunting is cold meds.

 

When the bag lands on Dean's lap, he stares at it unseeingly. How much of Sam is there left in there, he can't help thinking. In the bag were the stupid fucking cherry-honey Ricolas, the ones Sam knew he liked, the brand of cough medicine that worked the best, and all the things that spoke to his knowledge of Dean. Too many years spent travelling in the car together, too many years of mending and fixing and repairing.

 

Hands press down on his back, strip off his clothes as he shivers and shakes in the cold of the bathroom. When he presses his forehead against the cool white enamel he could groan with relief, the rest of him may be cold, may be threatening to shake him apart with shivers, but his head is too hot. He's aware vaguely of Sam, or the thing that looks like Sam, turning on the shower, letting the hot water beat down, stripping off himself and getting in as well like some twisted version of a cheap motel-shot porno. He lets himself be pulled in though, lets the hot water beat off his shoulders, mutely watches the drops cascade down the body of the thing that looks like his brother. Those strong arms are holding him up, and he wants to vomit and scream and slash and hit all at once, wants to collapse forward and pretend like he can't see what's looking after him.

 

Because Jesus Christ it feels good to let this happen even though he’s naked without his knives, more so than without his clothes. Sam doesn't seem to notice, lathers up the cheap showergel, smoothes it over him, and he knows that this is weird, but can't seem to care. It's not like this is Sam after all, he tells himself. Not real Sam. Real Sam would hold him up, but he wouldn't rub shampoo in his hair, ‘cause that’s too gay even for them. He knows that there is a thin line they are walking here, that Sam with no soul is unpredictable. Only helping Dean because this is needed for optimal results, his own agenda waiting in the wings. He tries to help, manages to wash himself with shaking hands, because for fuck’s sake he can do that at least. Sam’s fingers walk down his spine, following bone under skin, like he’s blind and can only see through touch, and under Dean’s own hands he can feel Sam, damp and solid.

 

When he steps out he holds onto the steel and plastic doorframe of the shower, doubles over, feels for a second like he's going to piss himself, like he can't stand up a second longer. Snaps at Sam to get out, because if he throws up or disgraces himself, he doesn’t want it to happen in front of someone who categorises his every moment of weakness. The nausea fades and he can straighten up, and Jesus this illness is kicking his ass. There’s a towel lying abandoned on the floor and he scoops it up and wraps it round himself. Sam might be comfortable naked in this cold but he isn’t.

 

  
When he sits on the motel bed, his skin rises into goosepimples again, and he watches numbly as Sam helps pat him dry with a towel, the motions brief, like he’s washing the Impala on a cold winter’s day, all economical movements and no waste of energy. “Why are you doing this?" he asks and his voice is husky and raw like the inside of his throat rebels against the question. Sam looks up at him, one hand gripping his calf, and he cocks his head to the side which makes Dean want to smash his face against the table, watch it bruise and bleed and swell, because he looks like Sam when he does that, like the proper Sam.

 

"Isn't this what I should do?" Sam asks, and he sounds honestly curious, like he wants to add something to what he probably thinks of as memory banks. Dean doesn't want to know what thoughts he rifled through that he thinks this is normal, doesn't want to think of anything but not throwing up, however hard that might be. Sam's hands are gentle, firm and strong, and it feels good, until he looks in his eyes, until he knows exactly what's touching him.

 

He's still shivering with cold, with fever that alternately burns him and freezes him to death, and even getting under the blankets proves an ordeal, particularly when Sam with no thought to decency or anything else, slides under with him, naked as the day he was born, looks at Dean with eyes that hide too much and tells him, "this is good for heat-sharing."

 

Dean generally doesn’t fucking spoon with anyone. He let Lisa’s cold feet press against his, threw an arm over her to keep her warm, but spooning was suffocating. Looks like he doesn't have much choice though so he shifts, knee pressing in uncomfortable places, over until his chest is against Sam's back. The warmth is prodigious, it pours off him like nothing else he can imagine, like a furnace and he shivers once more, when it feels like the goosepimples are trying to flee. He wouldn't let Sam spoon him, if you can't trust your brother to watch your back, don't let him flank it. This is safer, easier. It's easier to pretend this is Sam, to let the smooth warm heat knock you out. He tightens his grasp for a moment.

 

And now Dean is ill, and all Sam can do is go through the motions, like he's pretending to care. Kidnapped by fairies, turned by vampires, none of it mattered to him, not so long as Dean was alive. "Why?" he asks, though he doesn't hold his breath for an answer, when the question is so impossible to determine. He gets an answer though, Sam pushes back further against him, up close and real, like the 80% sum total of the brother Dean wanted back.

 

"What do you think I am?" Sam asks, and the softness of it makes the back of Dean's neck crawl. He can't tell if it's fever, or just disgust. "Aren't memories all that we have of other people? How can I not love if I remember loving?"

 

"They're not real," Dean said, and he choked on the words that spilled out from his tongue. _You don't look at me like he did._ The bastard’s trying to fuck with him, he _knows_ that. You can’t trust a word he says, even when he looks at you with those eyes, not even  when he smells like the brother you’ve always known.

 

He feels Sam shifting under his skin, like a restless disease. "You don't need a soul to love," he says, and his words are hollow and rotten to the core, even for someone like Dean who puts no great stock in his soul, has bartered it away to save this man in the past. There is the silence that falls between them now, like it all too often does. "I feel," says Sam, like he's trying to convince himself. "And when you bring the soul back?" (He does not say 'my') Dean notes, "you will destroy me. It'll be like I've never been. Flowers turn towards the sun even though they don’t feel either. Isn’t that a sort of love?" And occasionally he does things like that reaches right in close to Dean's chest and tugs at his heartstrings, makes him want to beg the fucking angels to get Sam back, to fix him because he can’t take much more of this. When you can’t see his face, when he says things like that, it’s too hard to hate him, too hard to distrust him.

 

Sam turns now, throws one arm over Dean, casually comfortable and possessive. "I stay with you," he says lowly, "doesn't that mean something?" And for the moment that's enough, that's enough for Dean, Sam is there warm and strong and perfect, hair tousled back, next to Dean in nothing. "Don't," he says, but there's no force behind the words that should be said. _Don't pretend to be him, don't pretend anything of the sort, just keep doing your job and letting me do mine._

 

And Sam's voice is lower now, right up close to him. "Do you want me to pretend Dean?" he asks, like he doesn't know what Dean feels. There's nothing in that tone bar faint curiosity. He doesn't mind. "Just for now, just while you're ill. I mean I _am_ Sam, but we can pretend I'm your Sam. You can let yourself sleep next to him, and in the morning he'll be gone."

 

Dean lies there like a stone, and he feels the surge of nausea up and down, like a sea in his belly, can't help wanting what's offered. Can't help taking it, just for tonight, one last hit of a drug proved too soon defective. He says nothing, and when he opens his eyes Sam is there in front of him, eyelashes long on his cheek, his hand between them like he's looking for something. It makes him want to shoot something, makes him want to curl around him and shake, and ask him never to stop.

 

He doesn't like being helpless near Sam, (but really that hasn’t been different in years, he’s always had to be strong,) doesn't like feeling wrung out and weak, like a sneeze would knock him over, and he rolls over; fumbles through his bag, drags out a knife. It’s cold and heavy and solid in his hand, and he drops it between them, feels the cold steel press against him, threatening a cut. He doesn't know if not-Sam notices the barrier between them. The steel warms gently, gradually, and Dean trusts to his innate sleep-safety not to roll on it. As it warms, the reality it represents slips away, his fevered mind can't take the strain. For a moment, he lets himself fall, let himself pretend. Lets it be Sam, sleeping next to him, warm and solid and real, like there's nothing missing. Lets himself rest cold fingers on Sam’s shoulder, feel that heat sink through his skin. Just for now. Just for tonight.


End file.
